An informal survey on a virtualization-specific Web site, visited mainly by IT pros and execs who are familiar with cloud platforms, showed that audience is using Microsoft Azure almost as much as perennial cloud frontrunner Amazon Web Services (AWS).

HP announced it will be adding Open Network Switches to its portfolio, reflecting an industry migration away from proprietary, locked-in networking solutions and toward software-defined networking (SDN), network functions virtualization (NFV) and associated new technologies.

Expressing some impatience with the enterprise adoption of open source software-defined networking (SDN) technologies, the Open Networking Foundation (ONF) industry consortium announced a new related open source software community and accompanying code repository.

Claimed to be the first enterprise-grade Big Data analytics platform targeting department-specific deployments, the new product is part of the exploding movement to simplify the traditionally complicated Hadoop ecosystem.

Red Hat said it's working with NEC on network functions virtualization features for its OpenStack Infrastructure-as-a-Service solution with the goal of developing a carrier-grade service for communication service providers.

Cisco Systems Inc. has made several fits and starts in positioning itself for the new era of software-defined networking (SDN), joining some initiatives and projects, proposing its own alternatives and now embracing multiple options.